


stop telling jokes, cause they’re not funny

by fucktheguitarist



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Ableism, Angst, Autism, Character Study, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Attempted Comfort, Kinda, M/M, autistic juno steel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-20 08:21:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14256834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fucktheguitarist/pseuds/fucktheguitarist
Summary: He’s diagnosed at a young age, and it continues to be the only thing in his life to not form into a variable in some point. It’s the only prevelant thing, and Juno hates it with every bone in his body.It interferes.(Title from The Front Bottoms’ “You Wouldn’t Be Laughing”)





	stop telling jokes, cause they’re not funny

**Author's Note:**

> don’t let the tags fool you this isn’t a sadfic okay. good(?) content here juno’s just been through a lot okay

The doctor--psychiatrist, that’s what Ben had said--looked at him intently. Juno avoided eye contact, not because he was in trouble, even if he so often was, but because he was simply uncomfortable. The psychiatrist had asked him about that, too. She had asked a lot of questions, in a small white room that was making Juno increasingly claustrophobic, too close in proximity to Juno, her expensive Hyperion perfume flooding his nostrils. It was overly flowery, kind of like teabags, and made Juno’s eyes water a little. A few more moments pass, and they feel like years, Juno persistently staring at his shoes.

Miss Psychiatrist turns away, and Juno hears her shuffling around in her box of things. She pulls out some cards, and she holds one up to Juno; he reluctantly tugs his eyes up to look. It has a picture of a dog on it. “What’s this, Juno?” Her voice is soft, and Juno does not trust this woman with any fiber of his very being.

He hesitates, doesn’t know if this is a trick or not. “A dog,” he says, as quiet as can be, his hands trembling the tiniest bit. He grips the bottom of the chair he’s been put in, to steady himself. Miss Psychiatrist nods and smiles. She tells him that he’s done a good job, all too warm and all too gentle.

She holds up some more cards, printed with animals and objects, and Juno says what he sees and she always congratulated him after. They repeat that motion for ages, and the few times Juno’s eyes catch hers, he is overcome with a feeling that he cannot quite put his finger on. A solid sense of… distrust. Fear, perhaps. He’ll ask Ben about it, when he finally gets out of here. Ben always knew the answers to these kinds of things.

Then, Miss Psychiatrist holds up a card with a face printed on it. “What’s this, Juno?”

Juno’s quiet for a moment, bites at his bottom lip. “A person.”

“What is this person feeling, Juno?”

Juno pauses, thinks it over. He looks at the picture, again; their mouth is open, lips curled up, eyes all squinty. He goes to answer, but nothing falls out. He thinks harder, looks through all the memories of things Ben has told him about determining things like these, and comes up with nothing. There are a million different possibilities, and Juno’s bad at these questions, the ones that elicit too many answers to settle on one. They crowd up his brain, stuff fuzz between the gears of the important parts. He tries to replicate the face in the faces of Ben, tries to remember what Ben said it meant, but he has taken too long and Miss Psychiatrist says, “It’s okay if you don’t know.”

Juno doesn’t. He nods wordlessly, and that is what he does for the rest of the cards, too. Miss Psychiatrist’s smile doesn’t falter, but Juno still feels like he is being examined, a specimen under a microscope. He hates it.

Miss Psychiatrist makes him do other things, too; line up little trinkets, define strings of words, makes him stop gripping at the edges of the chair so he starts shaking his hands around, which he never means to do but always happens anyway. Asks him a lot of questions, mostly. Juno hates questions.

He is let out of the room eventually, and Mama is sent in.

After that day, Mama doesn’t look at him the same ever again.

-

“They’re nice, I swear,” Ben says, leading Juno to one of the many empty parking lots around Oldtown. “Not anythin’ like the other kids at school, and they won’t mess with you. Not on my watch, Jun’. Promise.”

Ben doesn’t break his promises, and besides, Juno trusts Ben more than anyone else in the entire world and knows that Ben’s not lying to him, so he nods and matches Ben’s pace. It’s nice to get out of the house, anyway. Juno hates it there. Ben does, too. They go on in silence, but it’s a comfortable one, the kind that Juno likes a lot.

They arrive before Juno knows it, because suddenly there are two other kids standing before them. One is a girl, freckles dotting her dark skin, curly hair tied up into a kind of bun. She has grey-green eyes, and when she smiles at him, Juno can catch that her two front teeth have a little space between them. The other one is a boy who towers over the three of them, with dark skin and a big smile and long dreadlocks, who looks like he could crush Juno if he so desired; he’s that kind of tall. Juno trusts Ben’s judgement, though--up until the boy slaps his hand down on Juno’s shoulder.

Juno jolts, yelps a little bit, and the boy looks confused, continues to as the girl pulls him back from Juno and Ben gives him a look that Juno can’t exactly interpret. He’s too shaken to remember the hints; literally as well as metaphorically, his body trembling and his hands itching to move. He holds onto the bottom of his shirt instead, because he knows if he lets it go, the girl and the boy will think he’s weird and leave, and Ben deserved to have friends. They probably already thought he was weird, for that little stunt, but he couldn’t read them enough to know anything.

The girl gives the boy the same look Ben did, as Ben walks over to him and says something. The girl turns to Juno. “I’m Sasha Wire. That’s Mick Mercury--he’s not as much of an asshole as he seems, really. He’s a softie, you’ll see, he’s just dumb sometimes.”

It’s a lot at once, so Juno just nods. “You’re Juno, right? Ben’s brother. You look a lot like him.”

Juno nods again. Ben chimes in, saves him. “We’re twins.”

Sasha smirks. “Huh.” The boy that hit him--Mick Mercury--turns back to Juno, eyes wide and set right on him. Juno’s not sure if he should be… doing something. Mick holds his hand out. Sasha sighs, and Ben rolls his eyes. Juno looks at Mick’s outstretched hand, then quickly flits his eyes up to Mick before focusing his eyes back on this shoes. Juno fidgets with his fingers.

Sasha elbows Mick in the side, and Mick says, “Oh!” and sticks his hand back at his side. “Sorry! I’m Mick! Juno, right? Ben’s talked about you before!” Mick talks faster than anyone Juno’s ever met, and he can’t decipher the words Mick says next; it’s all a blur, really, sounds blending together and turning into some messy cluster. It’s a lot. Juno’s hands sort of rise up to cover his ears without him really thinking about it, and Mick suddenly halts in his speaking and just… looks, at Juno. “Uh.”

He’s done it again, hasn’t he? Dammit. He’s not really sure if he can listen, yet, though, so he doesn’t move his hands from their current placement; doesn’t feel like he could if he wanted to, anyway. Sasha looks, too, until Ben says, “Stop starin’ at ‘im, shitheads,” and as Sasha and Mick both look away, Ben walks over to Juno.

“They’re good, promise. Mick’s just stupid sometimes, and Sasha is smarter than him but she doesn’t get it either. It’ll be fine. You don’t gotta do that,” Ben says, gesturing to Juno’s hands over his ears. “If they bother you, I’ll make ‘em stop. You know that, right?”

Juno lets his hands slip back into position down at his sides, and says, “Yeah,” quiet enough that only Ben can hear.

-

That night, Juno holding Ben’s hands in his, playing with his fingers and reaching over to pet his hair occasionally, Ben pipes up. “I trust you more than anyone else in the whole world, I think. And I know you don’t always get that, but you should know it anyway, okay?”

Juno squeezes Ben’s pointer finger, a silent yes. “And we’re gonna be best friends forever, okay? No one’s ever gonna hurt you again, and if they try, I’ll hit ‘em right in the nose. Promise.”  
Juno bites his bottom lip, squeezes Ben’s hands. “I.. you’re not supposed to hit people.”

Ben snorts, but when Juno squeezes harder, he murmurs an apology. “If someone tries to hurt you, though, it’s okay. If someone hits you, you hit them back twice as hard. ‘Cause people don’t really get how you work, and that means they could get angry with you, and I won’t always be able to make ‘em back off.”

Juno considers this. “Don’t… don’t leave. You won’t, right?”

Ben smiles, turns to face Juno on their shared twin sized mattress. “‘Course not. I’ll always be here. Promise.”

“Pinky promise,” Juno counters, because that’s better than a normal promise, and holds his pinky up.

Ben hooks his pinky with Juno’s. “Pinky promise.”

-

Juno comes home to find Ben bleeding out of places people should not bleed out of, laying on the floor, and Mama crying from the other room.

He runs outside and promptly throws up.

-

After nine years, Juno changes. Forms a shell around himself that only hardens as he grows, learns how to keep his hands from flapping and his waist from rocking him back and forth every time he sat down. He still doesn’t let people touch him; the only contact he makes is when he fights, or the few times when Mick miraculously forgets again. He’s taught himself facial expressions and the meanings of them, studied them every day like a foreign language until he could finally faintly recognize them in conversation. Until he could act like he did, anyway. He learns to talk to people other than Ben and Mick and Sasha, tries his best to work out when things are sarcastic and when things are serious. He’s not great at it, but it’s enough to get Juno by without too much trouble.

He still gets called a retard sometimes, but that is something that he knows can’t be helped. Some things don’t change. Most everything else, though, does.

Social situations are still hell to navigate, and getting through a room that has surpassed the noise level of ‘quiet’ is just as difficult as running blindfolded through a maze that is crowded with death traps. It has been nine years, but nine years is not enough time to fix his brain. Juno will find a way to fix it someday, he knows it, but he can’t even make a loose guess to when that will be. He can just hope that it is soon, that soon, the hurting will stop and he can be rebirthed as a human being that is perfectly capable of all the things human beings should be capable of doing. One day, he will not dwell on not having Ben there to protect him. But that day is not today. That day is, most likely, not going to happen for a very, very long time.

When the three walk along the crumbled Oldtown pavement, the arrangement is always as follows: Juno on the left, Sasha on the right, and Mick in the middle. Juno always further from Mick than Sasha is, and that is not because Sasha has problems with personal space (if any one of them has problems with personal space, it would be Mick. It’s been nine years and he still forgot that touching Juno could send him into sensory overload if it was one of those days, could send him into sensory overload if it wasn’t one of those days).

The abandoned parking lot has not changed, except now there was one less person there and the remaining ones were there far, far more. They sit on the hoods of broken down cars no one bothers to salvage, lost children on lost machines. They are all sixteen, and all already as shattered as the windows. As the dusty Mars sky stares down at them, analyzes their every move, Juno feels both immensely uncomfortable and immensely comfortable. He thinks, anyway.

He takes a swig of the beer, passes it back to Sasha. Even cheap Oldtown beer costs too much to get one for each one of them, so they’ve learned to share. Sometimes Sasha yells at Juno for taking too much, but then stops, because Juno starts to curl in on himself a little bit and that’s when they could tell that they’d fucked up. Juno doesn’t like the pity, but it’s the best he’s going to get from people like Sasha and Mick, from everybody that isn’t Ben. He’s gotten used to it, whatever. There will always be worse things, even if his tolerance levels have been running thin lately.

“You walk like a fucking bird, you know,” Sasha snarks, as the three sit down on the hood of a car so rusted it’s impossible to make out what colors might have ever graced the surface. Juno flips her off, says bitterly, “Fuck off,” and chugs the whole fucking bottle, because Sasha had it coming.

“The fuck, Steel?! It was a—shit. That’s on me, ain’t it?” Juno does not know what Sasha was about to say, but he can take a good enough guess. He throws the now empty beer bottle on the ground, watched as the warm-amber shards skitter across the black cement. The smashing sound of the glass separating itself into little pieces makes Juno jump a little bit, which he should have been expecting, but hadn’t. So Sasha didn’t have it coming, and Juno had fucked it all up, again.

As Sasha mumbles an apology, and Mick scolds her for upsetting him, something strong and overwhelming comes over Juno and he bends down, grabs one of the sharp-edged fragments, and shoves it into his hand without a second thought. He groans in pain, sees the blood drop onto the pavement, tears up a little bit and wants to disappear because then Mick and Sasha are right there and it’s a little too much. A lot too much. He cries, doesn’t know why he did it, and he’s made everything worse because he doesn’t know how to fucking control himself.

When Mick stitches him up later, Juno hears Sasha call him a freak, and Juno doesn’t even bother to say anything because he knows it’s true. Mick yells at Sasha and then apologizes to Juno, but Juno isn’t listening, because Juno is crying.

Many, many years after, Sasha would tell him that she didn’t mean it, that the only reason why she said it was that she was angry at herself for making him do something like that and took it out on him. Juno does not believe her. Juno doesn’t really understand, even then, but he knows that Sasha had meant it, because even though she might not think it anymore, she thought it when Juno was nothing more than the retard that the better Steel twin had tagged on to their group, who only stayed around because she didn’t have the heart to tell him to leave.

-

Sarah asks him about it when he gets back to the house. Her voice is dark and accusing, the smell of alcohol heavy on her breath, and Juno locks himself in his room, Sarah screaming from the other side. He cries some more, stares out the window, and when he wakes up, he leaves through it.

-

Juno gets over it, keeps on going. Sasha and Mick both fuck up, but everyone does, and Juno, as he goes through every goddamn day, each as slow as the next, he figures out how to stop the tears from coming so compulsively. At seventeen, he learns to keep it inside at all times, even at the times where it hurts most. He’d gotten his nose broken because of it—it being his Problem—and with how everyone had acted after, he realizes that he can’t just be like that. So he stops. As fast as he can, anyway, and at seventeen, he acts as normal as he can. Mick smiles and doesn’t notice. Sasha snickers and then says that she knew it wouldn’t last, that Juno’s finally come out of his shell and the fact that Juno doesn’t have a goddamn clue to what that means makes it even more evident that no, he hasn’t.

Maybe he never will. God, he hopes not. He really fucking hopes not.

He ignores it for a while, acts as best he can, falls into the rhythm of how normal people look and speak and walk. He’s not as good as it, but he can fake it well enough. It hurts him, and at night, when he finally gets back to bed (if he does at all), that’s when he lets it out and cries or yells or flaps his hands and rocks back and forth until he calms down. There’s a name for it. Juno refuses to use it, because Juno starts to just not acknowledge that he has the Problem at all. Forces that information to the very fucking back of his mind, fighting it with all he has when it tries to creep out whenever someone laughs at him for saying the wrong thing. His mother has taught him that if you push something down enough, it will disappear, and that is what Juno is trying to do. He knows he can’t get rid of the Problem but he pretends that he doesn’t because if he faces the truth, he doesn’t know what will happen to him.

But, concealing the Problem makes a new problem (even if it was one without a capital, it was still important, but without the capital, evidently less so), which Juno doesn’t realize until it’s too late. Because, when Sasha invites him to some sketchy party, it does not occur to Juno that parties have never worked out well for him. So he says yes, which leads to worse things.

Worse things—worse than the blinding lights that flash in front of him, all around him, stabbing into him, the crash of music that drills his skull open and tries to tear it apart with its claws. Worse than the writhing bodies ramming into him at every turn, than the feeling of complete terror that made Juno’s blood turn to ice the moment he walked through the loosely boarded-up door.

He does not think when a girl, wearing nothing but a thong with her breasts right in Juno’s face and a smirk that stretched too far up, hands him a little, circular pink pill, and slaps it up to his mouth. Juno just swallows, not knowing what else to do because he couldn’t just spit it out (or maybe he could but he wasn’t sure enough to try), and it hits him in only a few minutes. Cradled by strobe lights and the pounding bass of electronic music, the shrill moans of people shoving and pushing into one another on a couch right there and a chair right there and on the floor right there, Juno drops to a different plane. Suddenly, everything is magnified, his vision putting everything under a microscope and his ears trying to process every single sound ten times louder than they should be, colors swimming and caressing him.

He can’t ignore it then, and as this hits him, as he hears slurred and too-high-pitched laughter and smells sweet smoke and fuck, he’s gone. The kid’s gone, he’s screaming and crying and kicking, the freak’s thrashing like a goddamn psycho! Couldn’t handle a few grams of molly, that’s it, that’s all it fucking was, and I knew he was fucked in the head, look! Maybe he’ll finally join that insane mother of his in the mental institution, see, look at him cry! I’ve never seen tears like that in my life. Have you?

Words blend together worse than they ever have, maybe, enough that Juno doesn’t even know which words have been spoken and which words are things that are just being pushed into his head, and Juno can no longer control himself or anything at all. He is too hot and too cold, too scared yet too confident, though he doesn’t feel anything. He’s contradicting his own existence every second, is what it feels like; a pill that brings the Problem out and smashes its head with Juno’s own faux-reality, is what he had taken, not whatever name he thinks he’d heard it called. Then, Juno blinks, and his cheek is slammed into cold, wet concrete, and dots of dampness are littering him. He shakes, teeth slamming together, feeling like they’re going to break. He grasps at an arm that’s not there, lets out a bitter, choked out sob.

Juno thinks he is dying. He thinks that this must be what dying feels like, and he feels sorry for Ben. But he also feels happy, because if this is what dying feels like, then Sarah Steel would one day go through this too, and if in the end, things happened as they should, Sarah Steel would go through something ten times worse than this. Or maybe that’s optimistic thinking. Juno is convinced that he will be dead in only a few minutes. He will not allow Sarah to cry for him. She does not deserve such luxuries.

Juno waits for death to befall upon him, and he does not know what he should be expecting so he expects nothing. What he gets is a slightly disconnected voice, far off from where Juno is, but then a hand much closer. Juno screams as loud as he can like it will help anything; the hand moves up to his mouth, and Juno, too exhausted to fight, stops screaming. Of course this would happen. Death cannot happen until something worse happens just beforehand, can it, and Juno tries to brace himself the best he can.

What he gets instead is the hand moving away from his mouth, and a familiar voice saying, “Juno, you god-fucking shithead, what the fuck did you do?” It is too loud for someone that’s so far away, until Juno realizes that they’re next to him. He steals a glance, sees it’s Sasha, and realizes that death is not among the possibilities. Seeing Sasha before he dies, he imagines, would be terrible. So he must be alive. Hm.

Sasha tugs him upright, hands gripping his shoulders all too tight, eyes fixed on Juno’s in a way that made him feel like thousands of spiders were creeping underneath his skin. He stares at his shoes; like he always does when people try to look at him. Sasha, though, yanks his chin to be level with hers, like she’s searching for something in Juno’s expression. It makes Juno immensely uncomfortable, and in his technicolor haze, he can’t muster up the energy or sense to do anything but scream. It works, and Sasha jerks back. Juno’s vision is going in and out of focus at an alarming rate. He can’t help but move, flapping his hands and rocking a little in that back and forth motion like he always did when he couldn’t keep everything in anymore, whines and groans rising from his throat and begging to be let out. He obeys their wants, because he doesn’t know how not to. Not right now, anyway.

There’s a moment where Sasha doesn’t say anything, just stares at Juno, sitting on the concrete and shaking and crying and giving up. Then, suddenly, “Juno. I… we’re going to Mick’s house. His parents aren’t home, and—you can stay there. Okay?” Sasha’s hair has come out of its tie, tight brown curls sprawled across her shoulders. Juno feels like he couldn’t walk if he tried, numb and weak, but he will anyway.

Sasha tries to help him up and Juno screams in response, so she stuffs her hands in her pockets and just walks beside him to Mick’s house. Mick hadn’t gone to the party because he knew better than to go to some sketchy Oldtown scene, or maybe he hadn’t gone because his parents weren’t home and he wanted time to himself. Either way, it didn’t matter. Juno reaches over and touches Sasha’s hair. She freezes at first, but then lets him, the silky strings weaving through his fingers. It feels nice, something he hasn’t done since Ben, and perhaps, makes Juno feel the tiniest bit better.

-

Mick stares at them when he opens the door, and Juno wouldn’t blame him. Sasha, sweaty with her hair down, and Juno, who they’d been so convinced was normal now, whimpering quietly and tearstained and petting Sasha’s hair with trembling hands.

Mick lets them in, of course, eyes trained on Juno the whole time. It’s a sight that neither Mick nor Sasha had seen in a while, anyway. It makes sense, looking back on it.

Mick still held his hand, though, let Juno lean against him and touch his hair when Sasha left. Mick was just like that.

-

Hyperion City was vastly different from Oldtown; flashy purple-blue fluorescents in place of flickering streetlights, cleanly paved roads packed with expensive cars instead of dirt paths with kids beating each other to a pulp on them. Hyperion City was a different level of sick compared to Oldtown—where Oldtown was blunt, putting its worst upfront and making sure you knew what you were getting into, Hyperion City crawled with big-shot politicians who you learned to respect until they threw you out onto the streets, rich people who laughed at chaos but still had the audacity to cry and look pretty for the cameras. Hyperion City lured you into a false sense of security the moment you entered, and you wouldn’t realize it until you were thousands of creds in debt and had more enemies on your tail than fingers on your hands.

But, as Juno quickly, quietly filled in the ‘any mental disorders, disabilities, etc’ as a solid ‘none’, he knew that better than anyone. He hadn’t trusted for a long time, and a change of scenery wasn’t going to change that. He was starting over, getting rid of the Problem once and for all, and this time he wasn’t going to make any stupid mistakes. He was in Hyperion City—the HCPD, soon—and there was no room for stupid mistakes there. No room for the Problem.

Hyperion City was Juno’s only chance at a fresh start apart from a switchblade stuck in Juno’s throat, and for once in his life, Juno could recognize that he preferred the former of the two. He’d been through HCPD’s physical tests already without issue; he was just going through the paperwork, now, before they could officially recruit him. He couldn’t get rid of the Problem entirely, he’d accepted that by now, but he could stuff it into enough drawers that it wouldn’t ever be known to anyone except Mick and Sasha. That it would never be put on paper, that it could scratch at Juno’s skull as much as it wanted but this time around, Juno would not relent. He’d been through enough shit to learn how to tough it out, how to resist every urge that so commonly sprung to the front of his mind. He wasn’t going to fuck it up again. And that was just… that.

Juno stares at the papers for a few seconds, wonders momentarily if he should just be honest and see how things pan out, but shakes his head at himself. He’s not an idiot. He knows exactly how that would go—uneasy tension in the air, too-infantilizing voices and an apology dripping with faux guilt. He’s not a fucking idiot. Not anymore.

He wordlessly shoves the papers into the stiff officer’s grip, and leaves.

He leaves behind a lot more than just the station.

-

The autism—Juno, recently, had given up on edging around it, as there really wasn’t a point anymore—had earned Juno somewhat of a reputation. Not because of him being autistic, plain and simple; he had made sure that nobody would figure it out, and nobody had. The reputation he’d gotten was for being an asshole, which, well, Juno had been slapped with many other worse labels, so he couldn’t exactly complain, but. He was the least asshole-ish person in the damn place, honestly. He just… forgot to respond to questions sometimes, and perhaps thinking before he spoke wasn’t his strong suit. He didn’t quite see how that made him an asshole. Whatever. He couldn’t give less of a shit.

From the day Captain Hijikata had recruited Juno to the force with a grimace (Juno was pretty sure Hijikata hadn’t liked him from the start, really) to now, lots of things had changed. Juno realized that trying to preserve his ‘dignity’ was stupid, stopped referring to the autism as a problem because what the fuck, what was the point? It wasn’t like it was going to change the fact that he had it. He couldn’t get rid of it, and if he was going to have to live with it for the rest of his sorry goddamn life, he needed to at least recognize it. So Juno decided to stop caring about a lot of things he used to hold with the greatest priority.

He got better at tolerating things that would usually push him to the edge in seconds, got better at holding on until he got back to his apartment to let go of everything. Learned to indulge himself, occasionally—not ever extremely so, but Juno gave in and got himself a weighted blanket (it felt better than he’d anticipated) and maybe a few of those toys he liked to stim with. Of course, they never left the boundaries of his bedroom, and were exclusively for emergencies, because Juno knew he couldn’t get too dependent. Too helpless. He had stopped caring about a lot, but he still knew what was important.

Juno’s not softening up. He’s just trying to minimize the time he’s stuck sobbing on the floor and generally freaking the fuck out when he gets back to the apartment. It’s not… a fun instance, to say the very least, and it’s more of an inconvenience than anything. Cuts the time he has to get extra work in on cases short, just leaves him fucked up and shaken, and if it’s especially bad, he’ll wake up and somehow getting out of bed turns into the hardest fucking thing he’s ever done.  
It’s stupid and he knows it, though, so he stuffs all the shitty feelings down to let out when he leaves the station. It’s the only option he has, other than skipping work altogether, which he has, admittedly, done before. Twice. When it’s bad enough that Juno honestly can’t tough it out, but he was trying to get better at that. At pushing himself.

Ulysses—one of Juno’s insufferable coworkers—punches him in the shoulder, and Juno startles back into reality, narrowly avoiding a small vocal exclamation along with the little shudder. He’s getting better. “You weren’t listening to a fucking word I was saying, were you? Christ, Steel, what’s wrong with you?”

As Ulysses babbles on about some important evidence Juno should really be paying more attention to, Juno thinks, a lot.

-

The sullen crack of a blaster’s shot used to make Juno flinch and tear up. Now, he could fire a million and never even blink.

Maybe it still makes his heart skip a beat, but. He was getting… better. That was the point. If you pushed through it with enough force, with enough persistence, you could build up a steady tolerance. That’s what Juno was doing. Going through the motions despite the difficulties his brain made up—going on.

-

Except, when the difficulties were not abstract concepts concocted by the less logical portions of his brain, and ‘going on’ was not something he was physically or mentally able to do. That was not getting better, but getting worse; the problem was, though, that Juno was too stubborn for his own good, and could not tell the difference in the first place. Lapses in judgement could pan out to catastrophical mistakes, etcetera etcetera. Perhaps like this time. Juno’s hands can’t stop fucking shaking.

Ulysses stares at him—everybody in the damn office is probably staring at him—as he twirls a pen through his trembling fingers (all he can think about is how he really needs to stim right now but he fucking can’t), runs his other hand through his hair and doesn’t give a shit if he looks like a maniac because fuck, he had other things to worry about now. Like how he was getting increasingly closer to losing his mind for real. Like how everything was going too fast but too slow simultaneously, how he could somehow hear every little sound like it was at the same decibel level as a car crash, how the thought of anyone laying a single goddamn finger on him was somehow the most terrifying.

Juno hadn’t gotten this bad in a while, and it was the least convenient time for it. And maybe it was his fault, more than anything; he was the one that had made the decision to get out of bed today even though every instinct told him he shouldn’t, that he couldn’t. He had made the decision that if he pushed himself hard enough, on days like today, that he would end up fine and he would get better. But, god, Juno doesn’t even know what ‘better’ means in the situation at hand. There’s no getting better. He can’t get better, that’s not how it all works, and he still can’t fucking understand why he could accept the fact that he had autism and the inconvenient side effects that came with it, why he could accept the fact that he had to do stupid things to make himself not freak out instead of just taking a deep breath like a goddamn normal person, but not the fact that autism wasn’t something that was going to relent if he jabbed at it hard enough.

Autism was a shitty roommate that took his things without asking and played their music too loud and threw raves in their shared too-tiny apartment. Autism was not going to leave, was not going to be considerate and listen to Juno’s many, many complaints; autism stayed and it fed off his tears and choked-off screams, stole his sanity and returned it with holes and scratches that Juno didn’t know how to fix. Autism would not get better if he just yelled at it, and it had been twenty five years and he should have known that.

Ulysses looks at him, and something was probably lurking clear as day in his eyes or perhaps just right on his face but at the moment Juno was scattered enough that he could barely tell Ulysses was staring at him at all. Maybe Juno was being too obvious. He probably was, he knew he was, but he was also not in the position to change that. So, he sort of just lets his pen glide through his unsteady hands, a repetitive motion to keep himself from giving in and doing something that he couldn’t cover up as just a nervous tic or something of the like. Ulysses continues to look for a few more moments, opening and closing his mouth repeatedly, before just shaking his head, sighing, and walking back to his own desk. Juno has never been more grateful.

There are things that Juno should be doing; paperwork to fill out, cases to work on. Instead, Juno plays with his pen silently and tries to ignore the way his body’s trembling. He’s close to being finished, the tears poking at his eyelids with pitchforks proving that, and he needs to delay that event as long as he possibly can. Which, evidently, is probably not long at all, but god, he’ll try anyway. He doesn’t have any other options, at this point.

Except, although Ulysses (or any of the rest of the officers in the damned place) hadn’t talked to him directly, he (or, again, anyone else who had their eyes fixed on Juno) had talked to someone else. Someone being Captain Hijikata himself, a someone who could really get Juno in the shit if he so desired. Which Juno knew, because in mere minutes, Hijikata was suddenly at his desk, nearly speechless as he watched Juno’s shaking hands handle the pen. Thinking to himself that he just had to keep the pen going between his fingers, because it made himself feel better and he needed to be better right now. So a few more moments pass, Hijikata staring and Juno trying his best to convince himself that Hijikata wasn’t even there at all, or that this was just some elaborate nightmare and this wasn’t really happening and Juno hadn’t really done something so damn stupid like going into work when he couldn’t even talk. Well. He could, but he wasn’t particularly capable right now.

“Steel. Come with me to my office. I need to talk to you,” Hijikata says, gruff as ever, and since Juno can’t muster up a worthy response he just tucks his pen into his pocket and follows. He’s so goddamn out of it that he can’t even figure out exactly what Hijikata wants to talk to him about, even though he’d been thinking about it himself ever since he’d walked in. Juno’s only getting worse, and it’s cutting that time he’d tried to reserve in order to delay the overload down very, very short. From hours to half hours to minutes to, if things did not go at all right once Juno entered the doors to Hijikata’s office, seconds. He really hoped that wasn’t what happened, but he also knew that hope counted for jack shit.

The only possible upside that Juno could find to the situation was that if he did overload here, at least the doors were closed and with the amount of soundproofing they put into each of these rooms, Hijikata would be the only person who knew about it. Or maybe that was worse, to have only Hijikata know and for everyone else in the station to think he just up and left because of something… futile, he didn’t know. Because if it did happen, right here, in front of Hijikata, there was no way Juno wouldn’t be fired on the spot. He knew it. “Steel, you know I don’t ask this much to anyone, especially not to you because you know how I feel about you, but. What the hell’s going on with you?”

Juno repeats the same motions Ulysses did earlier. Opens his mouth, fails to come up with something to say, closes it, tries again and just stutters,”I—I don’t—,” and stuffs his hand in the pocket he put his pen in and rolls it in his palm. Hijikata stares. Juno pretends he doesn’t. The only focus Juno has left is on the pen in his hand, on touching it and feeling the few different textures on his skin, trying his best to let it calm him down so he doesn’t freak out but it’s not enough and he knows it. A few more silent moments pass, Juno struggling to keep small whimpers locked up in his throat. Struggling to keep anything inside at all. His walls are crumbling faster by the second, and the crashing is the loudest thing he’s ever heard magnified by a hundred.

“Steel,” Hijikata starts, then pauses, like he’s trying to figure out what the right thing to say is. Nothing he says will be; Juno doesn’t even know himself what the right thing to say right now is. He wishes he had the capability to tell that to Hijikata, but he is not even close. Hijikata continues. “Steel, do you… need to take a day off, or somethin’? You don’t look so good.” The noises spewing from Hijikata’s mouth, too gruff and stern and offhandedly delivered and annoyed, causes Juno to burst into tears almost instantaneously.

So, he’d tried. God, he really had, but there were limits to what he could and could not do and what he’d been expecting to be able to do was now obviously impossible. It should have already been, but Juno was stubborn and too optimistic when he thought he was being pessimistic. Juno… often, was things without knowing he was them. Not denial, exactly, just a lingering misunderstanding of what feelings were to him and what feelings were to other people. A misunderstanding that, with Juno’s luck, would probably never get resolved. He’d curled in on himself a bit, trying to just make himself smaller in this moment, the pen he’d been caressing in his pocket now out in the open, turning through his fingers quickly.

Juno had tried so goddamn hard, but trying never got anyone anywhere. All he can do now is cry and flap his hands in a way that he really hopes isn’t incredibly obvious and murmur a soft, barely-audible, “I’m sorry.” His brain launches itself into hyperdrive, Hijikata’s words and touches perhaps gentle in intent but painful and terrifying in result, only succeeding in pulling a few helpless, startled whimpers from Juno’s throat. The key to noises that he had been keeping locked up fit and turned. He just wants everything to stop. He just wants to go home.

Juno’s instincts when he’s having sensory overload are less fight-flight-freeze and more just flight-freeze—if he can’t leave, he breaks. He’s breaking now, another crack to his mind that is so goddamn close to being shattered, all under the steady gaze of possibly the worst person to see him do this. But if Juno couldn’t change anything, then there was no point in trying, and the next few times Hijikata tries to put a hand on his shoulder or say some empty scrap of attempted comfort, Juno honestly can’t find the part of him that was so reluctant to groan in response. Bottom line is, Juno’s petrified, and since Juno does not have the power or mental capacity to fix it, he lets himself cry (and stim) about it. Hijikata takes the hint, if Juno had given one at all, and just silently sits next to him; Juno had sunken to the floor in that somewhat-short amount of time, fully in the fetal position and quietly rocking himself, looking for a type of consolation that he could handle right now.

He cannot entirely believe that what is happening to him is actually happening to him. His personal worst case scenario is just taking place without issue, his brain fucking him over in the worst way possible. It would be impressive—having a mental illness that could set Juno’s whole goddamn life off track for barely no reason at all—if it wasn’t happening to him. The fact that it is just makes it… shitty. He’s too out of sorts to make up some poetic, monologue-worth synonym for it. Sometimes he had to face things bluntly, and this was one of those times. So he sits, and he rocks, and he cries, and he does that dumb things where he sort of hits himself in the head and he hopes to anything out there that still cares about him that it’ll all end really soon. And maybe that’s not worth anything, but. It’s all Juno can do; not particularly to calm himself down, just… at all.

He feels pathetic. It’s the worst place to feel pathetic.

As soon as his brain snaps out of it, as soon as Juno realizes what the fuck he’s just done, he jumps to his feet and leaves as fast as he possibly can.

-

The confrontation goes about as well as Juno planned. Perhaps better, if he’s being honest. Hijikata’s eyes don’t quite meet his (this Juno doesn’t mind), and his words will occasionally have larger pauses between them than Juno was fairly sure they usually did, but that could’ve just been Juno overthinking the whole thing. He didn’t doubt it.

He quietly tells Hijikata about the autism, his autism, maybe being too snappy about it but too mortified by the whole thing to care about it. He’d thought he was already clean out of dignity, but apparently not. There went the last of it, though, Juno was sure.

In the moment, it’s hard to gage what exactly Hijikata’s feeling, but when Juno looks back on it (discusses it, with certain individuals), he thinks it’s guilt. He doesn’t quite know why Hijikata would be guilty, of all things, but then again, Juno didn’t know a lot of things when it came to the business of emotions.

In the end, what Hijikata says is, “Steel, I’m… sorry, but we can’t have you when you’ve got something, uh, something like that.”

Juno doesn’t bother to answer. He’s pretty certain that Hijikata knows exactly what Juno would’ve said if he had.

-

So the whole thing with Hijikata was never as big of a deal as Khan made it seem, and Juno’s unsure why Khan even knows about it—sure, he became captain of the precinct after Hijikata left, but Juno can’t really figure out why that was something worth knowing. He just knows that Khan knows about it, because Khan confronts him about it the first time they meet as Juno Steel and Captain Omar Khan. Not really confronts, maybe, more just… acknowledges it. Juno couldn’t tell then and he can’t tell no. And that was the end of it, unless there was something Khan saw that Juno unmistakably missed that would render Juno untrustable.

He doesn’t care enough to find out. He also knows that there’s a chance it’s not even linked with his autism, but he also knows there’s a very high chance that it is.

-

Juno doesn’t remember exactly why he registered to be a P.I. other than it was the first thing that came to mind and there wasn’t anything else for him to do. He’d always been the best at solving cases anyway, and maybe he got more of a kick out of it than the other deadbeats. He thinks it’s to do with his autism, in the end; the whole ‘hyperfixation’ part of it, but he doesn’t care enough to label it as that.

That, and Rita quit the HCPD the week after Juno got fired, and somehow persuaded him to do it. Juno trusted Rita more than he trusted… well, anyone that he knew at the moment, and she was the smartest person he knew at the moment. Tech-smart, anyway. Maybe she was a little scatterbrained, but Juno’s brain was even worse off, so. He registers to be a P.I., and he scrounges up enough money to get an office. So that’s where they start.

Well, perhaps it’s rougher than that, with Juno’s routine all thrown off and being around Rita all the time proving to be more stressful than he’d anticipated (she’s too loud sometimes, and talks far too fast for Juno to process it all in time to give an answer). But Juno learns, like he does with everything; learns the new routine and implants it very carefully in his brain in place of the last one, in a very slow and very distressing surgical procedure. He learns how to navigate Rita, how to come up with an answer much faster than he usually does and how to fake it if he couldn’t, how to not gently wince at any shout that emerged from Rita’s mouth, no matter how enthusiastic or well-meaning. It’s new, and Juno doesn’t always like new, but he can deal with it. And that’s what counts, he thinks.

So it runs normally for a while. Juno solves cases, fucks up a few times, gets better at solving cases, still fucks up a few times but less severely. Rita helps, her work performance following about the same pattern as Juno’s. They form a bond that’s kind of like friendship and kind of more (though never once delving into relationship territory because well, a lot of reasons), and Juno’s… okay with it all. He’s finally steady again, in all that time since he got fired from the HCPD, and he’s really okay with it. Juno likes his job, as much as one can like their job. He starts sleeping in the office a lot more, and it’s not on purpose until it is. Rita’s good at getting him out the door, though—she really is good at a lot of things. Juno doesn’t give her enough credit, and at the same time, doesn’t even know how he would convey that. Maybe that’s the reason. Maybe it’s not. Juno doubted he’d ever know for sure.

And then Rita finds out.

The way that it happens is… inconvenient, per se, and most definitely not desirable. If Rita was to find out at all, Juno would have preferred she did by Juno telling her himself. But things do not always go as planned, and Juno knows that better than anyone.

Juno’s on a case. Well, not anymore; he’d finished it, tied all the recent robberies back to Uriah Cellar, a Venusian thief that had been causing trouble for numerous planets over the last few months. Ze got locked up, Juno got a very generous pay, and that was that. He headed back to the office with a smug (yet well-deserved, surely) sense of satisfaction, with the means to have a celebratory drink that he perhaps would have had regardless of the case’s outcome. So, when he walks into the office, the only thing on Juno’s mind—the only thing he’s ready for, really—is pouring himself a glass of the cheap amber whiskey that resides in his second-middle drawer. What he receives instead is not at all something he’s prepared for, and therefore, it’s quite a bit of a shock.

As soon as Juno closes the door behind him, hinges squeaking with age, Rita pipes up, her sharp, peppy tone ringing clearly through the space. “Mistah Steel, now I don’t know why you had these in ya’ desk, and I know you wanna yell at me for snoopin’ through ya’ stuff but please don’t ‘cause I gotta reason, but these li’l twisty thingies are really fun! But why do you got ‘em? ‘Cause you don’t seem like the type, boss, really.”

It takes Juno a solid thirty seconds to process what Rita’s saying and what exactly Rita’s holding. In those thirty seconds, Rita just kind of stares, and Juno’s mouth opens and closes like it’s searching desperately for air. It is, sort of—Juno does feel very out of breath. A chill runs tauntingly down his spine, and Juno just splutters for a few more moments before stammering, “Wh-what?”

Rita waves the thing (it’s one of Juno’s tangles, he must’ve left it out, unless Rita had the nerve to go searching through his desk) in his face, and Juno backs up a little. “I wouldn’t usually botha’ you with somethin’ like this, boss, but I am your secretary so I think I got the right to know, huh? I know you gotta lotta weird stuff but I ain’t seen somethin’ like this ever!”

Juno debates lying, and then realizes that he’s in no state to make up even a half-believable excuse right now, and Rita should know something like this, right? He’s not one-hundred-percent sure. So he tries to think up a lie, and inevitably and admittedly predictably, he comes up with absolutely nothing. Okay. He’s not sure what he wants to say yet but Rita’s looking at him very expectantly, so he stalls. “I—it’s for, uh, s…stuff. Stuff.”

Rita doesn’t seem to be impressed. “Stuff like what, Mistah Steel? Ya’ killin’ me here, really, I’ve been goin’ over it for hours and I even asked Franny and she don’t know a thing about it either!”

Juno’s not going to be able to get off easy for this one. He gives up on thinking about it too much more, and decides to just throw it out in the open and see what happens. “It’s for. Um. It’s for m-my autism?” He doesn’t know how else to phrase it. He suddenly feels very cold and very numb.

Rita stares, mouth open a little, and Juno braces himself for the worst. He’s not exactly sure what that is, but he’s ready for it anyhow. Another silent moment passes.

Then, “Huh! I saw a stream where someone had that once!” And Rita goes on to explain some convoluted plot about… well, Juno can’t really follow it, but he thinks it has to do with robots? He’s not really listening. He couldn’t follow if even if he was, probably, but all he can focus on right now is the immense feeling of relief flowing through him, returning his senses. It’s strangely pleasant.

-

Rita gets used to Juno stimming around her, and she rarely comments on it.

Finally, Juno really has somewhere… safe. It’s nice. That’s all he can describe it as, honestly. Just really, really nice.

-

Special Agent Rex Glass wears all black, and paired with his dark hair (that’s well enough cared for to have a bit of a shine in the light) and black-rimmed eyes, the only spot of color on him is in his molten-chocolate eyes, dark-magenta lips, and the expensive-looking gold earring on his left ear. He is a study in monochrome, shades that do not overwhelm Juno’s eyes, and Juno appreciates that. Also, Rex has a cologne that doesn’t make Juno’s head swim, instead almost calming him.

Altogether, Juno can tell Rex Glass is very different from anything he’s seen before by a longshot. Sure, maybe Rex is kind of a stranger to personal space, but that’s something Juno’s used to. And perhaps there’s something else off about the Dark Matters man, but Juno’s brain was too focused on the mask to figure it out.

Simply, from the start, Juno’s… distracted. That’s rightfully irritating, and having too many things to focus on at one time only caused chaos for him. Multitasking wasn’t his strong suit; he was better at just concentrating on one thing for six hours straight with all the lights off. Therapeutic, sort of. Juno thinks of it as some kind of a break.

To add onto that, though, as seemingly great as Rex Glass is, Juno doesn’t like working with others in the first place. Messes with him, and god knows he’s bad with the whole social thing already other than all the cynical one-liners he can make up to cover the mess of social ‘skills’ underneath. Overall, Juno’s stressed, and nothing goes well when he’s stressed, because autism made Juno’s mind a lot more goddamn sensitive to tension than he was sure Glass’ was. The case was destined to fail from the start, is what Juno’s trying to communicate.

And it does. Juno had honestly almost pulled it off, too—with all the shit going against him, he had really nearly made it. But, well. You can’t win them all.

When they get back to Juno’s apartment, Juno has to work very, very hard to not start flapping his hands or anything else equally as inappropriate in the situation. It’s always a struggle, but when he gets nervous like this, it’s somehow ten times harder. Juno’s hands tremble just the tiniest bit when he pours whiskey out into two glasses; he can feel Rex’s gaze on him, unwavering. Juno’s never been fond of being stared at, but he’s not exactly sure what to say to make the guy stop, so he decides to keep his mouth shut about it. There are worse things that Rex could be doing right now. Juno would know—he had a lot of experience with irritating people.

Rex’s voice is as smooth as ever, sweet and tantalizing and with the silkiest tone Juno’s ever heard, the sounds sidling in on velvet fields. It throws him off, and maybe, it had been from the very moment Rex had walked into his office.

Rex’s lips are as pleasant as his voice, and for once, his hands on Juno are not disruptive or claustrophobic. They’re just… warm, secure. It’s hard to not reach out and touch them, intertwine their fingers and bask in the feeling it gave him. Juno resists, though, and instead of his fingers caressing Rex’s wrist, it’s a pair of cold, steel handcuffs.

What happens next is a blur. Rex getting taken out by the cops, a note wedged in between worn-out maroon couch cushions, Rex—no, Peter, gone from the cop car.

The outcome, though, is unmistakable. Juno gets as drunk as he possibly can without guaranteeing a hospital stay, has a meltdown that is maybe worse because of the alcohol and maybe worse because of Nureyev, and passes out on the couch, Nureyev’s cologne thick in the air.

The hangover he has in the morning seems to split his goddamn head open, but it still hurts less than the events of the night previous.

-

The Saffron Prince of Mars smells of something exotic and practically revolting, and it clouds Juno’s mind, along with the rest of Julian’s overwhelming tactics of what Juno thinks is supposed to be understandable communication. All Juno’s hearing is a strange accent (maybe not quite accent but it’s unusual) on an even stranger man, and the words being strung together within those can barely be put together in a way that makes sense. And maybe that’s just Juno, but also, maybe it’s not.

Julian’s personality itself had changed massively since the last time they’d seen one another in person, anyway, and Juno had known that but perhaps he hadn’t entirely been prepared for just how much that change really amounted to. He felt… out of place, unfit. It sort of catches him off guard, in the midst of everything. And maybe he’s overreacting, but he’s never been good with inequalities between his expectations and what really happened, and that’s part of the autism, isn’t it?

-

If Julian’s large change in posture and personality changed the case at all, the addition of Alessandra Strong rocked it like a boat in a thunderstorm.

This case was supposed to be something Juno did alone. He hadn’t been in the mood for company whatsoever, had been far less prepared for it, and generally had the foreknowledge that if another person was added to the mix unexpectedly that his reaction was not going to be… optimal. And it’s not; he gets mixed up, and usually he could get himself out of this kind of thing but Strong was stern and stubborn and Juno was caught too off-guard to say the right sentences that would let him off easy. It takes a while for his mind to sort it all out—well, it would, but Juno doesn’t have that kind of time so he lets all of the panic and error swim around in close-quarters and just depends on the fact that if he does not pay attention to it it will go away.

Obviously, it doesn’t. It doesn’t work that way. Juno hopes anyway, though, and also hopes Alessandra doesn’t notice too much when Juno starts running his hands through his hair maybe a little too often to just be fixing it.

-

Kissing Alessandra was a mistake. That day, Juno makes many mistakes, and the Martian pill is by far the biggest of them all. At the time, he doesn’t know that—only knows that Peter Nureyev was there, unmistakably, but Juno had not caught up with him quickly enough and now he was gone and Juno had some mind-reading pill fuzzing up his mind.

When he swallows it, the amount of voices swarming his mind is overwhelming and threatening and he comes close to breaking down right then and there. Maybe he does. Juno is fairly sure he had, and just forgotten about it, because Alessandra looks at him a little strangely when he wakes up in the hospital. A look that is not just to do with the fact that he’d swallowed some age-old pill, Juno thinks. But maybe he’s wrong about that, and maybe he can’t find it in himself to care.

He would never have been able to stay with Alessandra. She’s too abrasive, too much of the things that make Juno all uncomfortable. He just sort of wished he knew that well enough to not ever lead Strong on in the first place, because when it’s all said and done and he goes back to his apartment to have another meltdown, he finds he feels bad about everything.

-

With everything that had happened in Juno’s childhood (if it could even be called that), seeing the two main components face-to-face after fifteen years is bittersweet, except the bitterness all but covers up the fact that there was ever sweetness at all. They look too much like they did when they were all teenagers, and it makes Juno sick to his stomach. To remember what they did. To remember Sarah. To remember Ben. To remember all the misjudgements and mistakes Juno had made in retrospect to the autism because he had been too young to know how to deal with it. He knows that’s what Sasha’s thinking about, by the look on her face. He doesn’t know about Mick. Mick doesn’t often look back on things like that, the eternal optimist that he is.

Juno gets hostile, maybe overly so, and perhaps you can take the maybe out of that statement. He doesn’t mean to, but he knows what is going to get him a reaction, even though it might not be the best route. He’s not good at choosing the best route, it seems. Especially not right now. Mick takes a lot out of him, with his tendency to forget what he is supposed to keep to himself around Juno, like certain questions and statements about certain people and generally his own hands. Sasha tries to shut him down like she always does, with her accusing tone that always has an underlying meaning beneath it that is usually ‘Juno, I know that you are autistic and maybe don’t know this is inappropriate but I am going to tell you right fucking now that it is and you need to stop.’

Sasha doesn’t know that’s harmful to Juno because Juno’s never said anything about it to her, how he knows Sasha means well but really she doesn’t entirely understand why Juno’s doing what he’s doing and how just telling him to stop isn’t really the right thing to do. He knows he shouldn’t need to say that because he also knows he is an adult that shouldn’t need these reminders that what he is doing isn’t acceptable, even if Juno can’t quite figure out why.

-

Juno remembers Annie Wire. She was loud and touched too fast but she was a kid and she did not deserve what she got, what Juno gave her. What Juno didn’t give her, according to Sasha, but Juno doesn’t know if he believes Sasha on that one.

Juno doesn’t know if he’ll ever one-hundred-percent trust Sasha, after how she acted—how she acts. He doesn’t know. He’ll figure it out, one day. Maybe.

-

Juno could take care of himself, and now he knew, knew that he’d never trust Sasha because after all this time, she was still boiling him down to just his autism, wasn’t she? After all this goddamn time, she just saw that helpless little kid who’d be thrown into a meltdown at the sound of his own footsteps. Juno wasn’t that kid anymore, had gotten better about these things, could take care of himself (didn’t need a, a caregiver, wasn’t braindead goddammit why couldn’t she see that?) like an adult because that’s what he was.

He didn’t need looking after. He was capable.

-

Captain Khan is better than Captain Hijikata, Juno can tell. Gruffer, perhaps, louder. Juno doesn’t mind it, compared to the things Hijikata did, before he got fired thanks to the whole autism incident. Khan’s still… uncooperative, as all of the HCPD is. He doesn’t help, which is unfortunate, but expected. So Juno turns to a different help source, the one he probably should’ve just gone with first instead of bothering with the police, of all people. Valles Vicky.

She’s rough, has a sharp tone that delivers lines of speech that makes Juno take a second to figure out exactly what they mean. Not in the cryptic way, like a certain person that comes to mind; just in the confusing way. Combinations of sarcasm and reactions that are different from some other people’s, more stubborn. Juno doesn’t exactly trust her, but he can rely on her. He does not want to get involved with another case, but if that’s what it takes to figure out the Martian ordeal, then so be it. He had to.

-

Juno’s always hated parties. Too many sounds, too many noises, too many fucking people in one place at a time, all touching him and talking to him and just… everything gets to be too much. Accumulates. He can’t break now, but he knows that as soon as he gets back to his apartment that’s going to be what’s waiting for him. He always had meltdowns after cases like these, it seemed, ones that did not go as Juno had planned them to or ones that required scripts that Juno didn’t have or ones that were on an especially strict time limit. This case obviously had all of those factors, as well as being at a goddamn party, and that was all concerning. Juno’s on edge.

Ingrid Lake is a calming presence, all glimmering cerulean irises and flowing blonde hair, except for her apparent history of murder and the death threat she has placed upon Vicky’s shoulders. She’s sweet on the outside and sour on the inside; the opposite of her ex-lover. Current lover, in her mind, Juno guesses. Vicky’s not, has a wife and a kid, has her life together, essentially. Juno hopes to get to somewhere like that one day. Probably won’t, but, a lady can dream.

When he gets there, if he gets there, he at least hopes he won’t have any bloodthirsty exes searching to kill him. That’s a bit of an unrealistic wish, though.

-

The case, of course, works out. Vicky ends up safe, except for maybe a little mental scarring. Ingrid Lake ends up locked in Hoosegow. And Juno—Juno’s just looking forward to being able to go home and have a meltdown and wake up with self-inflicted scratches all over his arms and tear stained cheeks. Well, maybe he’s not looking forward to it, exactly. Just knows it’s going to happen and is getting very tired of keeping it all in.

He never gets to have that meltdown, not really. Because when Juno walks into his apartment, turns the light on with already trembling fingers, the smell hits him immediately. Something sweet and gentle, independent and specific, doesn’t make his thoughts start choking on fog. There’s only one person with that scent, with that very aura that sets Juno at peace and on edge simultaneously. Peter Nureyev; Juno could use a million different metaphors, a trillion different words to describe this man, but he couldn’t decide whether he was too drained or too shocked to come up with them.

Even hearing his voice strikes something strong and intense in Juno, a twinge of a string tuned too highly, snapping it in a second. It’s not connected to Juno’s temper, or his toleration limit, or anything with the meltdowns. He can’t identify exactly what it is, right then, just that Peter Nureyev has done something very important in just the seconds that they’ve been in this room together.

-

The drive out to the middle of the Martian desert is impromptu (Juno has barely gotten his coat back on when Peter takes his hand and leads them out of the building) and sweetly torturing. That smell envelops Juno tightly, wraps him up in a soft blanket of safety, even when his brain is screaming at him to break down because he didn’t know Peter Nureyev, not really, and this was not a safe situation at all and Juno had been set to break down this whole time. But Juno couldn’t, because if he was going to be working with Nureyev, then he couldn’t let things get between them, especially not the autism.

His hands are buzzing to flap and clap and touch Nureyev’s hands or his hair or both, his entire body thrumming like a car engine to just move. But he can’t, sits as still as possible, hopes Nureyev doesn’t notice how his knuckles are turning white with how tightly he’s gripping his seat. Or, if Nureyev does, that he doesn’t comment on it. Juno doesn’t know if he could handle something of the like right now, and certainly does not want to experiment with that thought. Thankfully for him, the thief in the driver’s seat does not say anything about it.

The train is loud, startles Juno, and considering that Juno was already at his wits’ end, the noise nearly pushes him over the edge. He holds on, though; he knows what is and isn’t acceptable, knows that it will probably be a while until he can let everything out. It’ll be a bigger meltdown than usual, but, well, Juno would gladly sacrifice his peace of mind for a chance to be around Peter Nureyev. Or, wait. Less romantic than that one.

The train is loud, but it is awe-inducing, the shimmery decals maybe earning one point to the calm side of Juno’s brain that was previously at about four to ninety-six on the panic side. It’s at least pleasing to look at, for the few seconds that they see it flash by. If Juno knew what it would lead to, well, he probably wouldn’t have thought that, but. In the moment, it helps, and Peter Nureyev looks at him with a smirk gracing his lips and a sparkle in his eyes that never seemed to leave.

-

Dahlia Rose. Juno gets stuck on the name, alone in the hotel room. Repeats it to himself, finding reassurance in how the syllables felt on his tongue and in his throat. In that short stretch of time in the hotel room, before wearing the suit that Nureyev had bought for him that Juno knew he would inevitably hate (he’s particular with texture, especially with clothing) and finding the codes in one of Nureyev’s many coat pockets, Juno stims as much as he can. Flaps his hands, claps, rocks back and forth, spins and jumps and runs around and plays with his hair. Anything he can think of, to soothe himself. It works, and even if it doesn’t put him at peace completely, he feels the slightest bit better.

He likes how Dahlia Rose slides off of Nureyev’s tongue, too, but especially how the name feels on his own. The sounds and the feelings that happen when he makes them are all right, and Juno takes pleasure in owning them, even for a second—even if he would never admit it.

-

Nureyev greets him with an affectionate tone that sounds a little too genuine, and Juno, even with the stimming session of sorts he’d had, is not even close to the point of being comfortable when Nureyev reached out to kiss his hand. Hopefully, that isn’t too obvious, because Juno is trying incredibly hard not to yank his hand back and punch Nureyev in the face. He can’t afford to lose control right now, though, not nearly, so he maintains himself as best he can.

From across the table, Aengstrom is eyeing him vehemently, stare too sharp for a man of his age. He’s wrinkled and grey, like a piece of paper that’s been crinkled one too many times and had far gone soft, except Aengstrom looked the opposite of soft. It’s unnerving, but not as unnerving as his bodyguard Valencia, who is practically crawling under Juno’s skin. Especially with her cigarette; Juno hates the smell of those things.

That might be why it takes Juno so long to realize what Aengstrom is pulling, might be why he doesn’t realize the most obvious step of beating Aengstrom until Nureyev yells it at him. Or it might not be, and it might just be because when you have autism, being a detective isn’t the best idea. The latter reason has a lot more worth.

To even succeed in that step, though, the retrieving of evidence, he has to go through a similar sensation to what he had to suffer through when he downed the Martian pill like a shot of vodka all that time ago. On a lesser degree, but it’s still hard to not break down right then and there, and Juno really fucking hopes nobody sees how his eyes tear up for just a second.

By the end of it, it’s no wonder that Juno’s gone from being on the edge of a meltdown to on the edge of a shutdown.

-

Juno should have known that the notes meant nothing, but whatever, he had autism and that made things less clear sometimes. Well, not sometimes, all the goddamn time.

-

Juno has not shared a bed with someone for a very long time, for a multitude of reasons: being incredibly averse to touch, being put in a situation where he could constantly be touched without his own permission, being at risk of so many things that Juno despised and feared with everything he had. But somehow, with Nureyev… it’s almost nice. The sweet scent of Nureyev all over him, now, the warmth of another body in such close proximity to his making Juno’s brain relax instead of spike up into paranoia.

In short, Peter Nureyev is an anomaly, and one that Juno is very grateful for, as much as he may act like he isn’t.

-

He gets that same feeling before he shoots the assassin that had slunk into their hotel room; the crowded one, where voices he didn’t recognize roamed the walls of his mind and pulled up the floorboards. It cracks another part of him, and Juno knows that sooner or later he’s going to shatter and if he’s not careful Nureyev’s going to be a witness to it, but he is not in the place to face that music right now. It feels less just like music, anyway, and more like an orchestra, waiting to start playing at decibels thousands too loud and split Juno cleanly down the middle.

He wishes he could go back to the timeframe between putting on a just-off suit and finding assorted notes in Peter Nureyev’s coat, where he had maybe two minutes to stim as much as he desired. He needs that desperately, now, but Juno knows that he can’t. It’s simply not an option right now, and he’s aware. Later. Later, he’ll have time, he just has to be patient.

-

The Ruby 7 is slick and matte maraschino cherry, reflecting the flickering fluorescent light clearly, Juno catching his face in the paint for a brief moment. He looks… tired. He feels tired.

The Ruby 7’s engine is loud and makes the seats rumble the slightest bit, and it’s like a jackhammer jammed in Juno’s brain. He doesn’t say anything about it, just hope Nureyev doesn’t notice the way he’s trying to subtly press his hands against his ears, in some futile attempt to block out the sound. It doesn’t work, of course, because he has to use the shotgun and that is very, very loud.

The Ruby 7 adds another wedge of concrete atop the glass that is Juno’s mind. It is cracking too fast for his liking, weaving spiderwebs of panic throughout his screeching mind, and he is starting to get especially worried about it. Once glass breaks, it can take days to repair it, and the tortured shards will slice slivers of scarlet out of your fingertips, whether or not they are sentient enough to have a reasonable intention.

The Ruby 7, though, is carrying two passengers, and the one that is not Juno Steel is Peter Nureyev. And Peter Nureyev, Juno thinks, may have fingers dexterous enough to fix the glass back together in perhaps only hours, or a mind clever enough to assure that the glass is never put at risk in the first place. That thought gives Juno some solace.

-

Many things happen on the train. Things that make Juno’s heart beat twice as fast, things that make tears poke with pitchforks at the corners of his eyes, loud things and sudden things and terrible things. By the time Juno and Nureyev get out, Juno feels like a kettle left on the heat for too long, like a child’s Olympus Mons model for some monotone science fair, ready to break open and burst apart and bleed out. The amount of half-processed feeling stuffed in the crevices of his mind is unbelievable, and it feels like a jackhammer has been driven to his head, vibrating and hacking away at flecks of flesh and bone.

All he wants to do is collapse on the desert sand and scream and sob and kick his legs out at nothing and smash his hands against his head until the shit jammed in the cracked-glass of his brain shook loose, and he can’t tell if he is sad or scared or angry but he is certainly not anything close to happy, and even less close to okay. Juno’s aware that that’s probably an immature urge, but god damn it there’s so much, and he doesn’t know what else to do about it. Meltdowns were his go-to way of coping with things, with letting things out, when just running around and stimming got him nowhere. Crying and screaming at absolutely nothing was a peculiar variant of refreshment, but it laid a blanket of calm on him for the following days as long as nothing particularly terrible happened. Then, on that occasion, it would reset. He’d spent weeks like that, in the unique place between stable and out of his mind, the middle line that was jumpy and disoriented.

The Ruby 7 drives up with a shriveled, dead-eyed woman in the front seat, guarded by assistants in surgery attire armed with machine guns, and that is what flicks the first switch in Juno’s brain. Not one of the switches there to control the rate at which Juno noticed and digested certain scraps of information, but one of the ones made to maintain the rate at which Juno fell into a meltdown. This is number one of three. His hands grip each other so tightly his knuckles go white, fighting not to start waving wildly or yanking the springs of curls out of his head. Anytime Nureyev talks, Juno barely even hears, all of the sounds inside of the car suddenly muted, as if he was wearing earplugs. Voices are garbled and messily knitted into one ongoing sea of white noise, and that knotted yet slightly unraveled scarf feels like it is going to choke him.

Everything feels simultaneously surreal and like it’s spitting acidic reality in Juno’s face, and it is all a single contradiction controlling the whole brain.

-

The second switch is flipped when Juno is strapped into a chair, legs and arms bound too tight, all senses pressed up against each other without any room to grow and spread. It’s all morphing into one multicolor mess of sounds and smells and tastes and textures and sights, and Juno has spent nearly his whole life being restless and when he can’t move his limbs start to get a physical sensation, a physical pain that’s sharp and tingling and absolutely hellish. His pupils anxiously flit this way and that, searching for something to fixate on, but everything swims and he can’t find a constant among the variables. He slips into hyperventilation numerous times, trying with everything he had to not just give in and start sobbing, because if he did Miasma would not hesitate to hurt Peter again. And Juno was not going to be held responsible for that, not this time.

So, he quietly suffers, only groaning ever so often, ignoring the look on Miasma’s scarred face whenever he winces. He can’t identify exactly what she’s feeling, he’s not good enough at that and Miasma is too good at hiding things. It all feels too familiar and too different, because while it is the opposite of what Juno had been anticipating, the opposite of how his routine normally worked with these things (if he could find one at all, which was getting increasingly difficult and increasingly stressful), it also takes him back to somewhere… else.

Somewhere out there, he is a child in a small, white room, getting smiled at by a psychiatrist. Getting shown cards printed with animals and people and more complex concepts that he hadn’t been able to comprehend at the time, concepts that shouldn’t have been complex at all. Papers flipped, a, “What’s this, Juno?” A quiet, trembling voice speaking a tentative answer. Stuck in an uncomfortable chair, trying to keep still and failing dreadfully. It is somehow almost the same, now.

Except he is not not trying to keep still, but trying to move, and he is unable to because of the bonds around his wrists and legs. Especially his wrists, he gets stuck on those, can’t stop trying to shift them even though he knows there’s no use whatsoever.

There’s a phrase he remembers Sarah yelling at him, all that time ago. When Juno was young and couldn’t control things as well as he could now, when he didn’t know how to push the restlessness down to let it out when he was in a safer situation, when he felt a meltdown coming along and was completely unable to fight it off. At the single twitch of his hand the wrong way, Sarah gripped his wrists harshly enough to leave bruises—ones he could still feel, if he concentrated hard enough—and would spit through gritted teeth, “Quiet hands, Juno.”

Quiet hands. Keep them still, at your sides or in your lap, and do not move them until I say so. Quiet hands. If I see you trying to wave them around like a fucking insane person, you’re going to regret it. Quiet hands, Juno, don’t make me say it again, I swear to God it’s going to get you killed one day, you little shithead. Quiet hands, quiet hands, quiet hands, quiet hands, quiet hands, and Juno could hear the echoes of her screams even now. Could feel her slender fingers digging into his skin, keeping his hands still, she’d made him sit on them for six hours when he was eight.

It sounds ridiculous, sometimes, now. That does not change how terrifying it is.

Juno thinks he might be as terrified now as he was back then; it’s hard to say. His brain has locked up large chunks of his childhood from him, and he is left with fractures of cold, numb pain and images of red-soaked silhouettes seen through tear-blurred vision. Sometimes he wishes he could remember. Other times, he wishes he remembered nothing at all. Currently, he is leaning heavily towards the latter.

-

The third switch is flipped when he is thrown back into the dungeon-esque room him and Nureyev are occupying. It is hard to tell what flicks it, because it all happens so fast. Fifteen seconds, precisely, of Nureyev looking at him with his face plastered with concern, and Juno staring into space and as soon as Nureyev speaks a single word (Juno doesn’t know what it is, hadn’t been listening nearly as intently as he normally would have probably been), he is gone. Juno merely blinks, and suddenly he is on the ground, pushed up against one of the four rock walls, knees pulled up to his chest with his arms wrapped around them as he rocked back and forth, back and forth, felt tears slipping down his cheeks. Noises bloomed like carnivorous flowers from his throat, threatened and frightened and panicked, and ever so often pain will spike up as a reaction to Juno slamming the back of his head against the wall behind him or Juno biting into his hand and watching the blood bead up.

He hurts. The jackhammer at his head has far reached the brain, drilling agonizingly to the center, wrecking all the parts that are supposed to help Juno function. They’d obviously already been broken before that. Nureyev touches him, once, just briefly on the arm, and Juno answers with a terrified scream, and his hand shooting out to either hit Nureyev or scratch Nureyev or do anything that will get him away. Touch hurts. Everything around him and behind him, above him and below him and inside him, it is all stabbing him and tearing him apart from the inside out. He feels blood streak down his arms from places where he’s dug in too hard, and he faintly hears Nureyev try to say something to him but Juno just can’t deal with that right now, so he screams another time and lets out a strangled sob. His head hits the stone, again, and he thinks he’s broken the skin but isn’t exactly sure. Nureyev darts to touch the back of his head, and Juno does not hesitate to scratch him for real this time because he cannot let anyone lay a single finger on him right now, it hurts too much, hurts more than Miasma torturing his already worn-out brain.

Nureyev jerks back, murmurs something that Juno can barely make out, because it occurs to Juno now that he hadn’t stopped screaming. He drops it, because it’s hurting his throat, and so the screaming continues to dissolve into groaned out sobs mixed with distressed whines. The jackhammer is going to split his head open, he realizes. He rocks faster, flaps his hands radiantly for a moment, claps and then buries his fingers in his hair. Small curls of hair remain on those fingers when he pulls them roughly out, and it hurts but he can’t find it in himself to care. The physical hurt is not as intense and incredible as the mental hurt.

The mental hurt is a throbbing thing all over his body, making limbs act out on their own without Juno’s permission, his wedged open brain not getting to the correct things in time, letting senses pile up, sounds filtering into an unwavering line of screeching and deafening thunder, sights getting as bright and invasive as looking right into the sun, everything just breaking down and not even bothering to try and keep Juno afloat. His body and mind are in a violent argument and he is the lost child trying to make sense of it, trying to find any solution to the conflict that does not lead to them getting more damaged than they already are. Things are not functional inside him, yet they are trying to function anyway, and it is only making everything all the more intrusive. It feels like he’s dying, and this is the worst thing his brain has pulled on him for a long while.

There is no definitive end to it, this time. Juno ends up passing out on the floor, scratches all over his arms, blood still dripping out of some of the newer wounds. Though, he wakes up on him and Nureyev’s shared bedroll, his arms suddenly clean of any dried red residue, nicely curled under Nureyev’s chin. And even when only hours before, he’d revolted at the thought of any physical contact, now, in this moment, the feeling was warm and pleasantly engulfing and distracting, and it was so very welcomed.

-

The tests, and the immediate meltdowns of the aftermath period, continue for days. Nureyev seems to grow either more tired or more worried, and the two expressive details of those two emotions are too similar for Juno to differentiate them in his current state.

Though, one day, instead of a meltdown filled with screaming and scratching and sobbing, Juno falls into the opposite end of the spectrum, too drained of practically everything to do anything else. He sits as he always does, but the tears are silent, and he rocks without the intention to bang his head against the wall or dig into his arms. It’s what happens, when he has too many meltdowns in such rapid succession, without time to appropriately recharge. Just… numbness. A complete disconnection to what had previously been somehow too connected. He feels like a ghost, apart from the fact that this time, he lets himself be held gently in Nureyev’s arms.

On this specific occasion, Juno can take pleasure in this one thing that is proving to him that he hasn’t disappeared yet.

This is how it works out for the remainder of their time in the tomb.

-

Juno trusts Peter Nureyev. And Juno did not trust easy, because he knew what happened if you did, had experienced firsthand the hardest way possible. But Peter Nureyev was perhaps the one person other than his own brother that made Juno feel as though maybe he wasn’t entirely a different species. The one person other than Benzaiten Steel that could make him feel as though he was truly safe, truly secure. Of all the people Juno had met, there had only been one that understood, and that was his twin brother who hadn’t lasted long enough to really realize it.

Now there were two. And that meant something, Juno was sure of it, even with his mind feeling like the equivalent to a burnt out fuse.

-

Things are too scattered to explain in the moment, so Juno waits until a later time to think on them. He can still only extract so much, with his mind having been set on the lowest setting, everything overflowing at every second, a mug set under a faucet for two days, just flooding and flooding and flooding until everything was buried with meters of cold liquid. There are millions of metaphors carefully braided around each of the thousands of frames, but Juno can only legitimize so many. A majority of the drafts are barely understandable, products of Juno’s mind zig-zagging to every familiar place in an attempt to make sense out of something.

What Juno can come up with is that there was a bomb, ticking down to what was presumed to be the end of Mars, and there was a thief, who had given up so much for someone he had known for a total time of just shy of a week, most likely, and a private eye, who had a brain that did not function as well as you would assume a private eye’s would but who still managed to do something gigantic. How gigantic that thing was, well, it depends on who you ask. Peter Nureyev would say it was absolutely life changing, and perhaps the greatest thing he’d ever see anybody accomplish. Juno Steel would say that it didn’t mean a thing, when you took into account what the real risk revealed itself to be, and he just hurt. Both would be correct, in different ways. Which perspective you agree with corresponds to which way you think about what happened.

Do you think about it as a life or death situation? An end of the world scenario? An uprising? A love story, perhaps? Everything varies, and everything has different outcomes, and everything is different, no matter how similar you may presume it to be.

Juno could throw out different interpretations for hours. But they did not have that time. So he spends the little time they do have on other things, on trying not to focus on the gap where objects used to fill his vision even when he was a constant witness to it, because if he did he would break down all over again, all too fast, and he wanted just one short segment of soft living.

Some would argue that that segment ends up being too short. Him, burrowed in Peter Nureyev’s gentle warmth, the most comfortable he had been in ages. In… forever, possibly, at this one point in existence where he had gone through something so terrible and come out the other side with someone else still believing in him, someone still willing to hold him and kiss him and tell him completely sincerely that everything was going to be alright. They are two people in a universe full of probably quadrillions, and yet in this moment, it is like they are the only ones, curled around each other with the firm knowledge that both have a feeling of true and pure love for the other, whether that is something they take pride or shame in. In a place so fiercely sick with violence and death and lying adopted fathers and bloodthirsty birth mothers, they both are so safe in each other’s arms, like there is nothing outside of this hotel room except for empty space and the absence of dangerously passionate hatred. Juno Steel and Peter Nureyev, in their own universe so separated from the one everyone that was so desperate to hurt them resided in.

But good things are venomously temporary, and Juno knows that as well as he possibly could be able to. And maybe there is a parallel to this storyline, where a good thing stays permanent, where a fire burns on even when struck by storms. Maybe there is a parallel to this storyline, where Juno is someone who understands these things, where Juno is someone who can accept those things that here are so difficult to even comprehend. Maybe there is a parallel to this storyline, where Benzaiten Steel was never murdered, where Juno Steel could be satisfied with just being happy and loving Peter Nureyev, but Juno could not be sure enough of that to stay.

As Juno steps out onto the sidewalk, fighting the overwhelming urge to just turn back and let it all go, he flaps his hands as hard as he can and he whimpers and claps and pulls his hair and runs and doesn’t care if he looks insane or retarded or whatever word someone decided to slap on him today. And Sarah Steel is screaming at him to put his hands to his sides and keep them there and Sasha Wire is speaking to him in hushed, firm tones that this isn’t appropriate behavior for an adult and Benzaiten Steel is whispering to him that he’d be there for him forever no matter what happened and Peter Nureyev is telling him that he is in love with him. There are so many people saying so many things with so many different emotions yet so many similar intentions, and standing under the night sky, Juno thinks he finally gets it.

**Author's Note:**

> check me out at dukeroses on tumblr i do autie juno prompts quite a bit there. another part to come in this series get ready it’ll have way more dialogue, way more peter, way more gay shit and a lot less fucking angst jesus.
> 
> please leave kudos/comments they make me sob tears of joy thanks. also thanks to the front bottoms for a good title and thanks to jordaan mason & the horse museum for making the album ‘divorce lawyers i shaved my head’ so i could write this shit without distractions.


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